


When did we both get so afraid to speak though

by becka



Series: Wildfire [3]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Babies, M/M, Reconciliation, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 15:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11603037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becka/pseuds/becka
Summary: Zayn wants to meet Louis's new baby. Louis lets him. Canon-compliant fic set in February 2016. Zayn POV.Part 3 of a series. Works best if you read the previous two parts.





	When did we both get so afraid to speak though

**Author's Note:**

> So I said this would be a three part series, and this is the planned third part, but I, uh, kind of want to keep going? So I may do that. Maybe.
> 
> Thanks to Em for always encouraging me in angsty Zouis writing. <3
> 
> Title from Marianas Trench.

He tells an interviewer he’d like to meet Louis’s baby, casually likes one picture of him on Twitter, but he doesn’t even know if he even has Louis’s right number anymore until a text pops up from THE TOMMOOO that says, _you can come meet him if you’re in LA_. It’s been so long that even the name in his contacts is only marginally familiar; did he change it to that? Did Lou? The picture that goes with it is Louis’ middle finger raised in front of his face, hair flung across his forehead, his cheeks pink. It’s taken so close up that the tiny icon on Zayn’s phone is just a jumble of shapes, and Zayn’s eyes only makes sense of it because he remembers being that close, because a year ago he knew every inch of Louis’s face. He doesn’t know it now, doesn’t even know if the text is an offer or a challenge.

He’s just sat down on a plane, leaving London for LA, and it feels serendipitous, like fate, that Louis would text him now. Zayn’s a big follower of fate. _Back in 12 hours. Tomoro?_

There’s a frantic rush in front of him as a family boards at the last possible second, and he pretends he can’t hear the excited whispers of the two little girls as they pass. He stares at his text history with Louis. The last message was _I’ll be in all night_ and the address of a hotel he’d stayed at in LA last summer. He was high and lonely and horny, and he just wanted to know if Louis would show up. It was shitty in hindsight, even if stoned logic told him it would somehow make things less weird to see him like always, to treat it like any other night they’d spent together. Louis arrived looking brittle and angry and hurt, and Zayn played it cool, and they had sex anyway. But afterward Louis told him there was a girl who was pregnant, and Zayn thinks he laughed. When Louis left, there was a finality to it that’s sat heavily in the pit of Zayn’s stomach since.

The plane doors are closing when the little dots pop up that tell him Louis is typing. _Call when you wake up_. Zayn sends back a thumbs-up emoji and then puts his phone on airplane mode for the duration. He falls asleep before they hit cruising altitude, but he wakes up feeling sick and anxious somewhere over the Atlantic. His first single’s number 1, and he’s carving a place for himself in the world on his own terms, and mostly the only surprises in his life have been good. He doesn’t want to look back, but he spends a minute thumbing through old pictures on his phone, Louis always turning toward him, pulling him in.

 

Zayn doesn’t want to do anything but fall into bed when he hits LA. He texts Gigi and his mum to tell them he arrived safe, and then he shuts the blackout curtains and sleeps for twelve hours.

He wakes up disoriented and fumbles for his phone. It’s after noon, and he scrolls through twitter for a while, texts Gigi who’s on a shoot and probably won’t see it for a few hours. He has to work up to texting Louis, his thumbs-up from yesterday hanging there so casual in his recent messages. He has a cigarette on the balcony in his boxers, a jumper that smells of Gigi’s perfume thrown over top. It’s clear and sunny, but not warm, and he doesn’t even know where Louis is in the sprawl of the city. _Just woke up_ , he texts, even though it’s not quite true. _Free all day_.

A few minutes later Louis texts back. _I’ll send someone to get you. what’s your address?_ When Zayn sends it through, Louis says to be ready in half an hour, no “looking forward to it”, no endearments, and Zayn doesn’t know how to take it. For all he can figure, Louis might be planning to murder him in cold blood.

The person who arrives to pick him up is Oli, and Zayn doesn’t know what to make of that either. He expected a professional driver, and although he and Oli don’t know each other well, they’ve got high together a handful of times, and he’s Louis’s mate. Zayn sits in the front passenger seat and doesn’t say anything beyond, “Y’alright?” Oli doesn’t either for a long while.

Finally Zayn can’t take it anymore. “Is Lou okay?” he asks. “And the baby?” It’s not what he wants to know, but it’s a start.

“He’s good. Baby’s good. Ten fingers, ten toes, all that.” Oli keeps his eyes on the road, and dread starts to bubble in Zayn’s stomach. He doesn’t want this to end with him and Louis still strangers, he realises. That might be even worse than the angry silence of the last eight months. That might not be something they could come back from. He leans his head on the window and doesn’t say anything else until they pull into an underground carpark. 

Oli takes him up on a service lift and then two flights of stairs, as clandestine as it ever was in the band. He phones instead of knocking when they reach Louis’s floor, vanishing down the hall again when Louis opens the door.

He looks small and tired and wary, a little like a cornered animal. The baby is a tuft of soft hair in a blanket clutched to his chest. Zayn doesn’t know what to say to him.

“I didn’t know if you’d come,” says Louis quietly.

“I said I would,” replies Zayn. He steps into the room and pushes the door gently shut behind him.

“You’ve said a lot of things,” murmurs Louis. He’s swaying slowly, and he sounds calm, but that could just be from trying not to wake the baby in his arms.

“I’m glad you texted,” Zayn tells him. 

“I thought maybe I’d call your bluff. Or maybe you’d have changed your number.” He sits down on one end of the small sofa in the corner of the room, and Zayn sits down beside him.

“You didn’t think I’d show?” He couldn’t have expected anything different, honestly, so maybe it’s stupid to ask. Louis would think so little of him, given the last time they saw each other. That’s probably perfectly fair.

“You could have asked me instead of saying to some bloke at Capital I wasn’t talking to you.”

“I couldn’t have asked though. I couldn’t have, like, jumped back in like I had a right.”

“That’s true,” Louis agrees. “You didn’t have a right.” He’s not looking at Zayn, eyes fixed on the downy top of the baby’s head. Zayn watches the spread of his fingers against the blanket.

“Can I see him?”

Louis pulls back a fold of the blanket so Zayn can see the baby’s tiny wrinkled face, his curled fingers. “Zayn, this is Freddie. Freddie, this is Zayn. He’s not to be trusted.” He says it in this sing-song voice that almost makes a joke of it, but then Louis was always most cutting when he was funny.

“He’s gorgeous,” says Zayn. He touches one finger to the back of Freddie’s hand, the skin silk soft. He’s nearly touching Louis’s arm, and Louis tenses against it, both of them holding their breath. Freddie dozes on.

“Thanks,” says Louis. “Do you want to hold him?”

“I’m not to be trusted,” replies Zayn, but he reaches his arms out anyway, lets Louis pass the bundle of blanket and tiny, tiny boy into them. There’s no way to avoid the brush of their hands in the transfer.

“I’ve seen you hold babies. That’s not what I’m worried about.” Baby Lux and baby Brooklyn and his littlest cousins, but maybe never a baby this new. He gathers Freddie in with one arm, leaning back on the arm of the sofa and steadying his other hand on the warm surface of his back until Freddie’s cradled to his chest. “I know you can be gentle.”

Zayn looks up at Louis’s face, but Louis’s still staring at Freddie, making sure he’s safe. Zayn brushes his finger along the soft curve of Freddie’s cheek. Louis’s baby. A tiny little person made of Louis. They’d made stoned promises to be godfather to each other’s children, eventually, in the distant future, and Zayn feels a little kick of loss. “Hey Freddie,” he says. “You’ve got yourself quite a dad, you know. He’s going to make you play so much fucking football.” He folds his fingers around Freddie’s foot, swathed in a fold of blanket, swings it forward and back. “Reckon he’s got the mini Adidas just waiting, maybe a sponsorship deal.”

When he looks up this time, Louis’s looking back, his expression soft and unguarded. Zayn’s given up a lot for the sake of his freedom this last year, and he can’t apologise for that, but he’s missed Louis not hating him. He expects Louis’s face to shutter—he’s seen the furious blankness of Louis’s expression often enough—but Louis gives a cautious smile. “No sponsorship yet. He’s just a promising amateur right now.”

“Early days.” Zayn presses his lips to the downy crown of Freddie’s head. “Where’s his mum?”

Louis nods towards a door that must lead to an adjoining room. “Napping, I bet. I said I’d take a turn with him until he wakes up. It’s been a shit few days for her. She can’t go out without getting fucking abuse in the street. We thought maybe she’d be safer here than at home.”

“That fucking sucks.”

Louis shrugs. “Is what it is. You traveling without security these days?”

“Sometimes. I just thought. I dunno.” Freddie squirms a little in his sleep, and Zayn rubs circles over his back.

“You didn’t want anyone to know you were coming.”

“I didn’t want it to look like promo. Like, I didn’t want it to be in the papers.”

“1D Peace Summit Underway at L.A. Hotel, yeah?”

Zayn’s mouth quirks into a smile. “Something like that.”

“You don’t need the promo anyway, I reckon. Plenty of buzz around already.”

Zayn wants to ask if Louis’s heard the song, but he knows it’s not Louis’s sort of thing any more than Louis’s songs were Zayn’s. “I’m doing alright.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Zayn breathing in the powdery scent of Freddie’s skin until he starts to fuss, little legs kicking, whimpers working up to a cry. Zayn shushes him, rocks him gently.

“Sing to him,” says Louis. “He likes that.”

“Yeah?”

“Not filth like your song though. Something nice.”

Zayn smiles in spite of himself. “Why don’t you do it?”

“He’ll want the better voice, won’t he?”

Freddie’s whimpers are getting louder, his little body flailing in the blanket. Zayn shushes him again. He would argue about Louis’s voice, but Louis’s watching him with a combination of accusation and impatience on his face. Zayn tries to remember any of the songs his mum used to sing when he was little, but they’ve all fled his mind. The only song about babies he can think of suddenly is “Isn’t She Lovely”, and he can’t look at Louis when he sings it. He does it anyway, swapping the pronouns and humming the words he’s forgotten, bending his head close to Freddie’s.

Freddie stops flailing by the second chorus, but he’s still grizzling, on the verge of a wail. Zayn lifts an eyebrow at Louis. “Guess he doesn’t like my voice as well as yours.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “Little lad needs to nurse every few hours. It’s not a review.” He reaches out for the baby, and Zayn passes him back. “Come on, Freddo, let’s go see mum.”

Zayn hears him talking in the other room and a single wail from Freddie before he goes quiet again. Louis shuts the door as he comes back through, and Zayn wonders if he’s meant to go now. But Louis flops down on the other end of the sofa again and gives him an appraising look. 

“I don’t want to make small talk, alright?” Louis says. “If you expect me to ask how your album’s coming and how your girlfriend is, you can leave.”

“I wouldn’t expect that. I just don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I can do to get you to forgive me.”

“Being sorry would be a start.”

“I’m not sorry I left.”

“I know.”

“But I never meant everything to get as fucked up as it is.”

“You gonna stop slagging off my songs all over the place then?”

“They’re not my kind of music, Lou. You know that. You can’t act shocked when I’m honest. When I’m finally being honest about everything. Including that I loved you, and you all dropped me and didn’t even look back.”

“I looked back. I looked back enough to…” He cuts himself off, but Zayn knows he’s talking about the summer. “You’ll tell anyone who’ll listen I haven’t talked to you, but maybe consider what you were doing with my mouth last time you saw me.”

“And you haven’t talked to me since then, alright? I wasn’t making that up. And it’s not like we were best mates before that either.” He doesn’t want to be angry; it doesn’t help. He takes a deep breath and tries again. “I shouldn’t have called you like that. I was fucked up and lonely and I let it get to me. I just wanted something familiar.” His pillows had smelled like Louis’s shampoo and deodorant the next day, and he’d buried his face in the fading scent. Louis had been his closest thing to home for so long. “I’m genuinely sorry for using you like that, especially when we hadn’t talked.”

Louis nods curtly. “Thanks.” He pulls the zip tab of his hoodie up and then down, a little nervous gesture. “I shouldn’t have gone anyway. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell you to piss off.”

“I’m a bit hazy on that night in some ways, but I think you did. I think that’s literally what you said.” Zayn can’t blame him for that either. He remembers sitting in his hotel room, staring hard at the phone after he texted and trying to intuit whether Louis would show, like he could reach out with his mind and just know. It didn’t work.

“Yeah, but then I came anyway. Never leave well enough alone, me.” He keeps fiddling with the zip, twisting the end of it between his fingers, and Zayn wants to reach for him, but Louis might still punch him in the face, and he’s got promo to do this week. “I don’t know what I thought would happen. Besides your dick up my arse, you were pretty clear on that one.”

Zayn’s got off with his mates before, but maybe not with the intensity of hooking up with Louis, walling themselves up in their little co-dependent bubble and touching each other because no one else would know how to do it as well. “We had fun, yeah?”

There’s a flash of something in Louis’s eyes before he lowers them. “Yeah,” he agrees coolly. “We had fun. And then it all went to shit again after. Predictably.”

Louis had spent the night, not entirely on purpose, just that they’d fallen asleep and then not woken up until it was light outside. Zayn had been mostly sober by then, willing to talk if Louis wanted, but it was obvious that Louis just wanted to hunch back home in shame and pretend none of it had happened. Zayn wonders if things would be different now if he’d convinced Louis to stay. He sits in the jittery silence for a long moment before he says, “Do you think we could ever be friends again? Like, what’s the long term look like? Because I’d wait, if it’s just time you need.”

Louis looks stricken, genuinely surprised and taken aback, and it’s the first time he’s held Zayn’s gaze, even though it’s clear he doesn’t quite want to. “I don’t know,” Louis says finally. He folds himself up tighter in the corner of the sofa. “I fucking trusted you, Zayn. I fucking… god, I don’t know if I’d do it again, honestly. You keep telling everyone I stopped talking to you, but you stopped talking to me first.”

“I needed to leave, Lou.”

“Stop fucking saying that like I don’t know,” Louis snaps. “You had to leave, but you put the rest of us in the shit doing it, and you said you’d call but you didn’t. Go fucking find yourself or whatever, but don’t say you’ll call and then go crying that no one’s been in touch with you.”

It’s good to have it out, Zayn reminds himself, better out than holding back, letting Louis build up this rant any longer. “I just needed time to sort my head out. Actual time, time where no one was going to guilt me into coming back.”

“Would guilt have worked?”

“No, but it would have made it harder. It would have, like, made it longer until I was okay.”

“Were you okay when you phoned me in June? Because if that’s what okay’s like, you were worse off than I thought when you left.”

“I don’t know.” He scratches at the back of his head, turning away from the laser-focused look Louis’s giving him. “I think that, like, once I knew you lads weren’t gonna talk to me on your own, and you were talking about it in public as though everything was okay, I was pissed off. Like, I had been waiting for things to settle down, and I realized maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe you’d just given up on me.”

“And you can’t see how it looks as though you gave up on us first?”

“I gave up on a band making music I didn’t give a shit about. I don’t know how many times I have to say it. Like, I didn’t think it was that hard to understand. I didn’t think I’d have to keep fucking saying it wasn’t about you. But it wasn’t fucking about you.”

“Yeah, alright, you’ve said it enough. God, you’re the worst fucking one-night stand of my life. And considering I got a total stranger pregnant, that’s fucking saying something.”

It’s like Louis’s just throwing shit at him now, trying to see what will stick. “What are you talking about? It wasn’t a one-night stand. It was never a one-night stand. We were friends. You were, like, my best friend. Does sex really change that for you? Are you really that pissed off that we fooled around before I left? Still?”

“Yes.” Louis tucks his knees up in front of him in the corner of the sofa. “Look, this is getting us nowhere. Why don’t you go home? Thanks for coming anyway, mate. Freddie’ll remember it fondly, I’m sure.”

Zayn has the chilling thought that maybe he’d done something Louis hadn’t wanted when he’d been high that last time. The whole night is in pieces in his brain, but they all seem to add up to something that makes sense, something they’d both been into. Louis had been sober, and he’d come down anyway; he’d stayed anyway. “I feel like I’m missing something. Did I hurt you last time? Did I… I dunno. Was it bad?” Could Louis hold a grudge for half a year over bad sex? Probably, honestly.

Louis closes up tighter, his eyes going flat in this way Zayn never imagined might be directed at him. “Leave it,” he says. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“I just want to know what happened. If it’s something I can fix, like, you owe it to me to let me try.”

“I don’t owe you a single fucking thing, mate. I spent five fucking years thinking we’d always have each other’s backs, and I can admit that I was wrong. In the end you’re not going to look out for anyone but yourself. And good for you. Good for you taking what you need and no regrets.”

“I didn’t say no regrets.”

“What do you regret then?”

“I regret laughing when you told me about the baby. I regret trying to use fucking twitter to show I wanted to talk to you now. I regret not being able to say maybe we shouldn’t talk after I left. Because I knew that then, and I made out like I was strong enough to keep in touch, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t.”

“You don’t regret fucking me?”

“Not unless you do. If you do, if I did anything you didn’t want, I’ll feel like shit. I thought I knew. Like, I thought we understood each other.”

“I used to think that too.” Louis holds his eyes for a long moment, too long and weighted down with so much he’s not saying. Zayn wishes he could get right inside Louis’s head, pick up all these pieces, all these vague allusions, and fit them back together into something recognizable. He and Louis used to know each other so well, and not that long ago. Surely there’s something that makes sense of this.

“I’m sorry you’ve changed your mind. I don’t think things have to be so different. I don’t think you’re so different or I’m so different from how we always were. We just aren’t, like, coworkers anymore.”

“You’re with Gigi Hadid, right?” Louis asks.

“Yeah,” says Zayn.

“Do you screw around with other people still?”

Zayn sighs. “You don’t have to say it like that, like it’s some fucked up, shameful thing. When I was on tour, when I was away for fucking months at a time, Pez and I had a deal. When I’m not doing that, I don’t need to make deals. Fuck, you sound like the tabloids.”

“We weren’t coworkers last time. Last time I was just someone you screwed because you were away from home and fucked up and you already had my number.”

“I keep thinking you’ll change it. Your number. I didn’t expect you’d still have mine either.”

“I wanted to delete it,” Louis tells him.

“Yeah? Why didn’t you then?”

Louis gives a tense little shrug. “Dunno. Never got round to it, I suppose. Lots of other stuff on my mind, you know.”

That’s no kind of answer, but they can’t just keep going in this circle where he challenges Louis and Louis strikes back at Zayn’s weak places. “Are you going to delete it after this?”

Louis sits quiet for a moment, just letting Zayn wait before he says, “Probably not. I’ll probably just leave it. Otherwise how will I know what I’m in for, next time you phone? It takes mental preparation, a thing like this.”

“It doesn’t have to be this hard,” Zayn says, and he tries to make it kind, even though he’s seen Louis bristle at kindness as much as anything else. He knows Louis’s stubbornness is part of what’s making things so difficult. Not that it would ever be easy.

“It does,” Louis replies with a finality like a door slamming. It’s enough to get Zayn on his feet and glancing towards the door. Louis doesn’t get up.

“Was that the last straw?” Zayn asks. “I know how you are with last straws.”

Louis is silent for a long, long time, and Zayn listens, shocked, to the way his breath stutters, like he might be on the verge of tears. He doesn’t know if Louis cried when he left; Louis’s tears were always a little idiosyncratic. “After that last time, I looked at you in the morning and it was just too hard. It was too hard being in love with you.”

Zayn goes cold all over, but his heartbeat kicks up like he’s running. “What?” he says stupidly. “What’s that mean?” He’s stood there like a twat, unsure what to do with his shaking body, whether he should come closer or stay away.

Louis doesn’t reply. He’s got his head tipped down, but Zayn thinks he’s probably crying from the tense set of his shoulders, crying and trying not to let Zayn know. Like Zayn wouldn’t know. Like Zayn is a stranger Louis could fool. “Lou?”

“You can’t fix it,” Louis says. “I can’t fix it. It’s fucked. It’s so fucked.”

Zayn sinks down onto the floor, puts a hand round Louis’s ankle. He’s shaky, but Louis is actually trembling. “I love you,” he says, but that’s obviously a mistake. Louis jerks his foot out of Zayn’s hand.

“Thought it might feel better saying it, but christ, it’s so much worse.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” He digs back through layers of shared secrets and mistakes, kisses and orgasms and late night talks, all that stuff that wasn’t like any friendship Zayn had had before, and he doesn’t know where ‘I’m in love with you’ fits in. Falling in love is dinner dates and romantic gestures and shy smiles and, like, courtship.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Louis quietly. “It doesn’t change anything.”

Zayn can’t agree with that. He wants to ask when, for how long, what he’d ever done that could leave Louis feeling like that all this time. “I have to say I didn’t expect that.”

Louis laughs sourly. “You and me both, mate.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me? Like, before we fooled around. You could have said.”

“Really? Could I? I didn’t even fucking know. I didn’t figure it out until you were already on your way out the door. If I could have just hated you, it would have been so much fucking easier, but there was all this other stuff.”

“I thought that too,” Zayn admits. “I was so fucking pissed off when you were all saying it was fine, and we hadn’t even spoken. It was like it didn’t even matter what I thought or what my life was like, or anything, and I wanted to just be like, well, fuck them. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t just not care.”

Louis drops one hand down on the sofa in reach of Zayn’s, and Zayn doesn’t know if he’s supposed to reach for it, but he does, folding his hand around Louis’s and leaning his chin on the sofa cushion. He can tell Louis’s hurting, and it makes him ache inside too in that old familiar way, like late nights on tour this time last year, when Louis just radiated pain. But Zayn doesn’t know how to help him with this. He’s loved Louis, and wanted him, but he’s never been in love with him. It’s a different feeling in the pit of his stomach than what he has with Gigi, what he had with Perrie before it all turned to sour obligation.

Louis squeezes his hand and then lets go, looking down at Zayn through eyes muddy with tears. He unfolds himself slowly, and Zayn shifts sideways to let Louis thump down onto the floor beside him. When Louis’s shoulders unbunch and he holds out his arms, Zayn hugs him without hesitation, Louis’s chin hooking over his shoulder. All the bony, clashing parts of their bodies fold together, and Zayn closes his eyes, overwhelmed by the smell of Louis’s skin. Holding him doesn’t feel like a reconciliation, but it’s something.

Their bodies slot together like muscle memory is stronger than pain, and Zayn hangs on even when Louis starts fidgeting away. How the fuck was he supposed to know Louis was in love with him? Could he even have done anything different? It’s not exactly his fault Louis had feelings he never bothered to share.

“You wouldn’t have stayed even if I’d told you,” says Louis quietly.

“No,” agrees Zayn. “But I wouldn’t have called you last summer either.”

Louis pulls away, tucking his knees up practically to his chin. “You wouldn’t even have looked back, eh?”

“I would’ve tried not to make it worse for you.”

Louis shuts his eyes, his face starting to crumple into tears again. “I’m so fucking stupid,” he says quietly. “Do you have any fucking clue how hard I tried to stop? And I couldn’t. I told myself every single reason you weren’t worth it. But I couldn’t stop fucking remembering how it was with you, when we... I never stopped thinking about the sex.” Zayn watches him swallow. “Do you ever think about it?”

Zayn hesitates. He can’t make more of it than it is, and he doesn’t want to lie. “Sometimes. It’s why I called last summer, yeah? Because I was thinking about it.”

“And after that?”

Zayn wants to say _Don’t do this to yourself._. But he can’t oversimplify it now. “I don’t know,” Zayn tells him. “I don’t, like, keep a tally. I used to think about it more, I guess. It’s easier not to sometimes. You know it’s easier not to.”

“I can’t stop,” Louis says, sounding helpless and small. “If I could just stop, I would. I would do an _Eternal Sunshine_ move and just cut it out. But I can’t.”

“I don’t feel the way you do,” says Zayn.

“Yeah. That’s pretty fucking obvious.” He’s crying slowly now, tears gathering and falling as he blinks. It’s awful.

“But we could have sex again. If that would help.”

“Would that help?”

“Dunno, mate. I haven’t been through something like this before.” Sex couldn’t save him and Pez, even as friends, and he’s never let messing about with a mate get tangled up like this.

“My baby’s right the other side of that wall,” Louis says. “I’ve got all this new shit to deal with, and I can’t even get past things that happened a year ago. How am I supposed to be someone’s dad?”

Zayn cups the back of his neck, and Louis flinches. “You’re gonna be an amazing dad. You’re gonna be the best dad there is.”

Louis looks up, and Zayn kisses him, gently, just in case that’s what he needs. His lips hit the corner of Louis’s mouth, and Louis turns into it instead of away, his lips parting for Zayn’s tongue. He feels familiar, and Zayn shuts his eyes and sinks deeper into kissing him for as long as Louis allows. One tender moment, oversaturated with emotion.

“What about Gigi?” Louis asks.

Zayn’s heart constricts in his chest. He hasn’t made her any promises, and she’s been pragmatic about his past indiscretions, but he wants to be better now.

“You should go,” Louis says, when Zayn’s silence lasts a moment too long. “I don’t want to fuck things up for you, if they’re good now.”

“I could tell her,” Zayn replies. “I think she’ll understand. If it would… you know.” He runs his hand down Louis’s back, settling it between his shoulder blades.

“Don’t know if I could stand her knowing, if I’m honest,” says Louis. He’s always closed up tight instead of letting people in when he’s hurting, and Zayn looks at him for a long moment, trying to work out what to say.

“I don’t think I could just not tell her.”

“Does she know about you and me?”

“She knows what the rest of the world knows. I haven’t, like, told her we fooled around.”

“Why?”

“It was before I knew her. She doesn’t have to know everything about my life before. I don’t think she’d want to.”

“So if I, if I wanted… you’d have to tell her the whole thing? Everything that happened?”

“Not in detail.”

“It’s a bad idea,” says Louis, but talking himself into it, like he would sneaking the golf buggy’s keys at a venue or smoking up an hour before an interview. They were partners once, making all their best and worst decisions together. “Would you like it? Not, like, for things with Gigi, but just for its own sake? Would you be thinking of her the whole time?”

“No,” says Zayn. “I never thought about anyone but you when we were doing that. That wouldn’t change.” He still remembers the heat of Louis’s mouth and the slick grip of his arsehole, the soft sound he made when he came. It had never been anything less than great sex, even if it produced this mess. “I love you, Lou. Whatever other shit’s gone on, it’s never been that I didn’t love you.”

Louis curls tighter into him and takes a shaky breath against the side of Zayn’s neck. He feels so small in Zayn’s arms, and Zayn thinks about the baby again, about Louis as a dad trying to sort stuff out for his kid and defending him as fiercely as he’s defended against Zayn this past year. It hurts more, seeing Louis like this, knowing this is what he gave up, even if he had to do it for his own survival.

“If you just kiss me,” Louis says softly, bargaining, “do you have to tell her?”

Zayn shakes his head. “Don’t think so. She kisses her mates sometimes.”

Louis pulls back with his eyebrows raised sky high. “Does she?”

Zayn grins in spite of himself. “That’s what she’s told me, yeah.”

“In-fucking-credible. But that means you could kiss me. And it could just, like, stay between us.”

Zayn doesn’t let himself hesitate, even though he thinks maybe he’s leading Louis on somehow. “Yeah. I could kiss you. If you want.”

Louis stands and leads him to the bed, which is plush and impersonal like every other hotel bed they’ve shared, and Zayn lies down facing him, studying the sticky tear tracks on Louis’s cheeks. “I don’t know if this helps,” Louis admits with his eyes closed.

“I want it to,” Zayn tells him. He angles his mouth over Louis’s, fitting their lips together and pressing the tip of his tongue to the hot gap between. Louis’s mouth is salty with tears, but Zayn licks into him, sliding one hand gently into his hair. He lets himself wonder if there was ever a moment he could have fallen in love with Louis, but it’s so far away at this point, so tangled up in his feelings about the band and his place in it. He doesn’t think it could ever happen now, but he wants to give Louis something. Even if it can’t be the thing Louis really wants.

Louis pulls back to sniffle and lick his trembling lips. He’s crying again, or still. “I missed you,” Zayn tells him. “I’ve never had a mate like you were to me.”

“Yeah,” Louis says, sniffling again. “Fuck, this is disgusting. I’m sorry.”

“Shared worse bodily fluids with you, alright? Come here.” Louis leans in again, opening his mouth on Zayn’s, and Zayn doesn’t know how he means to explain the beard burn, but he closes his eyes and kisses Louis harder. When Louis sets a hand on his waist, tentative, Zayn relaxes under his touch, settles into it. He hasn’t told anyone where he is, so he’s got no one expecting him, and it’s maybe the first time he’s been with Louis without anyone else’s obligations crushing him down.

They kiss for a long time before Louis pulls away again, rolling onto his back and rubbing one hand absentmindedly down between his legs. “We need to stop. I’m getting all worked up, and you can’t…” 

Zayn’s a little bit hard too, but not enough that he’d want to stop. He shuts his eyes and doesn’t try to touch himself, even though he wants to. “Do you want me to go, let you take care of that?”

Louis thinks over his answer for a long time. “I’m afraid if you go I’ll never see you again.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. You could just phone sometimes. When you’re in LA. Or I could when I’m back home. We could see each other.” He leans up on one elbow to look at Louis’s face. “I don’t want to never see you again. I never wanted to not see you again. Can you believe me if I tell you that?”

“I can try. But you’re phoning next time. None of this social media bullshit that makes us both look like twats.”

“Okay.” Zayn brushes his mouth over Louis’s again, soft. “I promise I’ll phone.” And he will this time. He’s up to it now. And Louis needs him.

“Thanks,” says Louis. He looks wrecked, and his voice is thin. Zayn kisses his cheek this time, lingers there for a moment.

“I love you, bro.”

“You too,” says Louis, hesitant but not grudging. “You’re going now then?”

“I don’t have to. We could, like, watch a film or something. Something lowkey.”

“Something normal,” Louis adds. He sits up and gives another discreet tug at the crotch of his trackies. While he digs out the TV remote, Zayn fluffs up the pillows and starts on his bootlaces, making himself comfortable. When Louis sits back, they fit just right against each other, settling into familiar alignment, Zayn’s arm curled around Louis’s waist.

They skim through the pay-per-view menu, comparing notes on films they’ve watched in the year since they last watched one together. Louis’s hair brushes Zayn’s cheek every time he moves his head, and Zayn breathes him in, achingly familiar. He’s sure they’ve got more stuff to fight about, more hidden hurts and betrayals that’ll have to get dragged out, but this moment of respite is more than Zayn could have expected when he got up this morning. And that’s something.


End file.
